Ernest Heming Themes in Killers

The Killers
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) was an American writer of novels and short stories. Before turning to fiction, he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and served as a First World War ambulance driver before enlisting with the Italian infantry and suffering a wound. After the war, he worked for the Toronto Star and lived for a time in Paris. During the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, he served as a newspaper correspondent, and then lived in Cuba until 1958 and Idaho until 1961, the year of his death by suicide. His narratives frequently contain masculine motifs, such as bull-fighting (Death in the Afternoon), hunting (The Green Hills of Africa), war (A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls), and fishing (The Old Man and the Sea). All of these motifs derive from Hemingway’s own experiences as a traveler and adventurer. Arguably, he was a better short-story writer than a novelist, although it was his longer works that built his reputation.

Historical Context"The Killers" was written in the 1920s when organized crime was at its prime during Prohibition (Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933). Chicago was the home of Al Capone (He was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early 1920s to 1931.), where Hemingway himself spent time in Chicago as a young man. When things became too dangerous for the mob, they retreated to the suburb of Summit, where "The Killers" takes place. Not long before the story was written, the Chicago mob had killed a popular boxer of the time, Andre Anderson, who'd once knocked Jack Dempsey off his feet, likely Hemingway's source for the Swede. Despite Hemingway's knowledge of organized crime, he omitted much of that background from the story. Hemingway himself said, "That story probably had more left out of it than anything I ever wrote. I left out all Chicago, which is hard to do in 2951 words. Characters

Nick Adams: The protagonist is a teenager of about eighteen or nineteen. In an age of gangsterism and loosened morals, he appears to have an upright character. Adams is a character in twenty-four Hemingway short stories that trace his development from childhood to adulthood. Hemingway loosely based Adams's experiences on his own. Al: He is a hired killer, apparently from Chicago. He wears a black overcoat, derby and gloves. Max: He is Al's partner. He also wears a black overcoat, derby, and gloves. George: He is the counter man in Henry's lunchroom.

Sam: He is the black cook at Henry's lunchroom. Other characters refer to him as "the nigger," a highly offensive term that whites did not hesitate to use in the 1920s. Ole Andreson: He is a former heavyweight boxer whom Al and Max mark for murder. Motorman (Streetcar Conductor): He is a customer who enters Henry's lunchroom but leaves when George tells him that Sam, who is bound and gagged in the kitchen, is not on duty. Customer: He is the man who enters the restaurant and becomes angry when told Sam is unavailable to prepare a meal for him. Other Customers: (1) He is the man for whom George makes a takeout ham-and-egg sandwich while Sam remains gagged in the kitchen. (2) another customer who enters and leaves the restaurant while the hired killers are inside. Mrs. Bell: She is the person who manages Hirsch's rooming house, where Ole Andreson rents a room. Summary

It is getting dark in Summit, a suburban Chicago town, on a day in late autumn. Inside Henry's lunchroom, George is manning the counter when two strangers wearing overcoats, derbies, and gloves walk in and sit before him. Although the clock on the wall behind the counter reads 5:20, it's only 5 p.m. No one in the restaurant ever bothered to reset it. The strangers...

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...JOURNAL: “The Killers”
The short story “The Killers” written by Ernest Hemingway begins as two rude men walk into a lunchroom and start taunting George, the man running the place and Nick Adams, a young man sitting at the other end of the counter. Finishing their supper, the men reveal that they are planning to murder Ole Anderson, a big Swede, former heavyweight prizefighter, who often ate at that lunchroom. After 7:00 pm, they stop waiting for the man to enter the scene; it was clear Ole was not going to arrive. The two killers, thus, left quite passively. Nick then decided to warn the victim of the harm coming his way by visiting his room at a board house. He finds him lying in bed fully dressed and aware of the fact that two murderers were after him. Ole does not wish to run away, accepting the fact that he will die, yet still can’t bring himself to leave the house to his death. At his return, the men left at the lunchroom stand around talking about how awful it is. Nick declares that he’s planning to leave town while George, ready to forget about it all, advises him just not to think about it.
“The Killers” is a typical “loss of innocence” story. The protagonist, Nick is exposed to the many existing evils in human society throughout the novel: antipathy, murder and simply lack of empathy and care. It is, in this tale, experiences that jades and hardens as evidenced by the older characters who...

...﻿The Killers
Professor Notes
some charachters are supporting cahracthers because they help the development of the plot. Killers George and sam, hall and max.
Other caharacters are faceless: motorbike guy, the guy that asked for dinner. Used to create suspance but not so importants
nick had to understand that he has to support the consequence of what he did . There is no way to run away from your rong doing
there is helplessness in this world
nick want to escape the town because in that town he experienced pain
he learnt a lot from this experience but he is not ready to front this real word yet for this reason he changes city to escape .
Analysis
1. Cliffsnote
Nick says that he's going to leave town because being in a town where a man passively awaits being gunned down is too terrible.
Note that we don't even know why the killers are murdering Andreson; Readers are far more concerned with Nick Adams' initiation, or exposure, to evil and how he reacts to it.
Al and Max: heir faces are not alike, yet they are dressed in identical black overcoats, and black gloves — black, of course, being the most common and perhaps oldest symbol of evil.
Nick's deep sense of responsibility is evident in his need to warn Andreson of the impending danger, and he is confused by Andreson's passive attitude.
Response to evil : Considering the different kinds of reactions to evil, first there is the cook's reaction, who wants to close his...

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ENG - 223
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Essay 4
The Killers
Hemingway’s “The Killers” tells the story of a diner in Summit, Illinois, that hosts two rude overdressed men. The three employees of this diner are Nick, George, and Sam. Nick, a frequent character employed in Hemingway’s stories, watches as two strange men walk into the diner and sit down to order. After complaining for a while about the menu, these men eat their meal all whilst making rude remarks and racial slurs to George and Nick. Following their meal, these men proceed to tie up Nick and Sam, the cook, in the back of the diner. They continue by asking where a man by the name of Ole Anderson is. George responds by saying that Ole Anderson comes in regularly to eat. After revealing their intentions to kill Ole Anderson, the two men wait for their victim to show up. Once seven o’clock rolls around, the two assassins give up and leave the diner. Nick, feeling that he is obligated to warn Ole Anderson about the incident, heads over to Ole Anderson’s residence. Surprisingly we find Ole Anderson lying fully clothed on his bed. Having no response to Nick’s tale, Ole Anderson faces the wall and states that he has no desire to continue running from imminent death. Nick, shocked by his answer, returns to the diner stating that he is leaving Summit. He explains himself by stating that he can’t stand the thought of a man waiting passively for his death.
Throughout his story “The...

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...Ernest Hemingway is an author well known for the common themes in his novels. In his style of writing, Hemingway is able to express the themes of the novel through strong character traits and actions. The common themes in Hemingway's novel The Sun Also and A Farewell to Arms are death and loss. The characters in these novels, and many of Hemingway's other novels, can relate to these themes.
The novels The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms share many similarities. These of course include the themes of death and loss. The common themes are supported by the war setting in A Farewell to Arms and the post-war setting in The Sun Also Rises. Both novels take place in Europe approximately in the 1920s. Jake Barnes is the main character of The Sun Also Rises and he is struggling through life after having experienced some trauma during the war. Frederic Henry, the protagonist of A Farewell to Arms must make the choice of staying in the army or abandoning his fellow troops to be with his girlfriend. Both novels explore the hardships of love, war, and death."The wound, the break from society, and the code are subjects of Hemingway's work" (Young 6). These three events are critical in Hemingway's novels The Sun Also and A Farewell to Arms. "The Wound" represents just that, a wound. It can be a physical, mental, or an emotional wound always occurring in the story's protagonist. This...

...Review of Ernest Hemingway and Writings
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelest and short-story writer
whose writings and personal life exerted a profound influence on American
writers of his time and thereafter. Many of his works are regarded as American
classics, and some have subsequently been made into motion pictures. A review of
Hemingway reveals many interesting points about his life, about the influences
upon his works, and of the the themes and styles of his writings.
An examination of Hemingway's past brings to light many interesting
points and helps to create a better understanding of how he came to be the
master of the understated prose style. The second of six children born to
Clarence and Grace Hemingway, Ernest was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park,
Illinois. The society he grew up in was one of strict disciplinarians. His
parents were no exception. In fact he spent much of his life trying to escape
the "repressive code of behavior" (CLC, 177) that was pushed upon him as a child.
After graduating high school in 1977 he chose not to go to college and instead
became a reporter for the Kansas City Star, where he remained for seven months.
His oppurtunity to break away came when he volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance
driver in Italy. In July of 1918 while serving along the Piave River, he was
severely wounded by shrapnel and forced to return home after recuperation in
January 1919. The war had...

...﻿
Research Paper
Section I: The Author
“Ernest Miller Hemingway, was born in July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, there he started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution. During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat. Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are...

...Introduction :
Hemingway is a great figure of the « lost generation », like Fitzgerald, S. Anderson, G. Stein, S. Lewis… F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken” to describe the feeling the young intellectuals had in this years. The writers of the “lost generation” added their own feelings of loss and failure to the previous tradition of realism. The short story The killers by Hemingway is representative of this realism and those feelings of loss and failure, because it seems that Summit (the town where the action takes place) and its inhabitants are part of a sterile and destructive world without any god or powers above.
How and why is this short story representative of this “lost generation” ?
I) Realism :
• The setting & the atmosphere :
- the setting seems to be a commonplace : comparison with Ed. Hoppers’s painting Nighthawks, representing a similar place
- a very common lunch counter, in an American town, Summit
- artificial atmosphere with “streetlight”, “arc light” in the street ; the colours seem to be absent of the scene : this is a sort of black & white scene, with the darkness of the night and the artificial white light, the “black overcoat” and “the face was small and white”…)
- the town seems to be a dead town, with a great impression of loneliness
• The mundanity:
- everything is prosaic : for instance, the menu : « a roast pork tenderloin with applesauce and mashed potatoes » or...